


106 - Sad Van McPan

by storiesaboutvan



Category: Catfish and the Bottlemen (Band)
Genre: M/M, Reader-Insert, Sick/Sad Van, Van McPan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 22:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17434790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesaboutvan/pseuds/storiesaboutvan
Summary: Filling the prompts “van being in love with this girl while meeting the reader and they become friends and all but she breaks up with him and van is a fucking mess like drunk everyday and all that and the reader just stays with him and they slowly fall in love” from @hermosadecadencia and “a relationship … built on music” from @thesambuca and  "van dating a guy when you meet / before you get together ? because van mcpann is a blessing" from @placidus





	106 - Sad Van McPan

With a record in each hand, a decision had to be made. Bowie. Joy Division. Technically, both could have been bought. It would just mean you'd be eating more two minute noodles that week. You quickly surveyed the room to see if there was anyone around that could help. There was a girl at the counter, but she was a) on her phone and looked busy with that, and b) was so pretty you felt nervous at the thought of even asking her opinion. There was a group of girls over in the 'just in' section frothing about The 1975. A guy with a mohawk that reached high into the air appeared to be also agonising over a decision; his was between Cannibal Corpse and The Doors. You hoped he picked Jim. The only other person in the store was a normal looking guy. He was flicking through the film soundtracks. 

Approaching him slowly, he turned to you. His smile was an invitation for conversation, and you held the two records up. "Please help," you said. He laughed and took them from you.

"Well, both are staples in your collection, yeah? So you can't go wrong. But, would 'ave Joy Division done so well if Curtis hadn't... you know?" the guy said. 

"I don't think you're allowed to say that,"

"But you agree though, right?" he grinned. A lack of reply told him all he needed to know. "Ziggy here, but. Now that's a fucking icon."

He handed them back to you and you nodded. He was right. "Thanks, man. That actually helped," you said with a smile.

After you navigated the stressful interaction with the pretty girl at the counter you moved to leave. The guy was reading the track listing on the Trainspotting soundtrack as you walked through the door. 

On the bus, hunched over your journal ten minutes later, you startled as someone plonked down in the seat next to you. You looked up and came face to face with the record store guy. He was smiling warmly. His hair had little drops of rain sitting on it from the mist outside. You took your headphones out. 

"Hey," he said. 

"Hi," 

"I'm not following you; just on the same bus," 

"I didn't think you were following me," 

"Good. I'm Van," he said and stuck a hand out. His politeness matched his warmth. 

"Y/N."

He asked you about the journal and if you wrote. Explaining that the most you got out were fragments of stories, or studies of characters, he said that you just needed practice. 

"Not trying to be patronising or anythin' but you just have to keep writing. Like, every day. I write three songs a day and then just keep the best one. Just keep writing until something half decent comes out, you know?" 

"You write songs? You're in a band?" 

"Yeah! Started it in high school, but really trying to make it into something now. Even had some people from the record labels come out 'n watch us play. I reckon we can do it, you know? If we keep working hard. Grafting." 

Van tried to describe what his band sounded like, but he was vague. He joked that he mostly ripped off other peoples' sounds. He spoke about Brandon Flowers like he was a god. You laughed at Van's stories of ninja gigs and attempts to get backstage at concerts. 

"Well, it sounds like you'll probably make it. You clearly are in love with it,"

"I am. Got a lot of people that have invested in me now. Can't let them down,"

"I have a feeling you couldn't let anyone down," and you meant it. There was something about how Van spoke that made you trust him. If you had the money, you would have funded his band yourself. When he handed you a cheaply photocopied flyer for a show, you promised you'd be there. He bumped his shoulder against yours before bouncing off the bus and waving at you through the window.

…

Amelia stood under the street light smoking. In her black steel capped boots and thick eyeliner, she scared people. You watched the groups of people walk around her like water flowing around a rock. She still cried every time she watched Disney films. Every. Time. If only they knew.

"So is this Van guy's band any good?" she asked.

"Don't know. That's, like, why we're here, you know? Like, at this place? To listen? Then know?" you replied sarcastically. She shot you a look.

"Sorry," someone said behind you. Spinning, there was a boy. He wore skinny jeans and a ratty Blink 182 band shirt. He had dark eyes and messy bleach blonde hair. "I just overheard. You know Van?"

"Um, yeah, kinda. I just met him the other day at a record store," you said.

"And he invited you to come?"

"Yeah. I think we like the same music, so he figured I might like his band," you theorised out loud, and the boy nodded slowly. "Um, I'm Y/N. That's Amelia," a wave from her. "Are you in his band?"

"No. He's my boyfriend," the boy said and smiled, but it sounded like a warning.

"Oh! I'm not like… he didn't…" you quickly went to explain.

"Y/N!" Van called, walking from the front door of the venue. He wrapped his arm around the boy and kissed him on the cheek. The boy shifted uncomfortably under the weight. "Glad you came. Do you guys know each other?"

You looked to his boyfriend, waiting to see if he wanted to reply. He said nothing. 

"No… we just started talking,"

"Not like Gabe to talk to randoms," Van said.

"Heard her say your name. Says you invited her," the boyfriend, Gabe, said.

"Yeah. Gotta build that fanbase, babe," Van joked and kissed Gabe on the cheek again.

"Right. I'm going to go see if Larry needs help."

Van watched Gabe walk down the street and turn the corner. "Sorry, Y/N. He's been extra moody lately,"

"No, it's fine,"

"He's cute!" Amelia added, stepping closer, having finished her cigarette.

"Oh, I fucking know. Way out of my league. Don't know what he sees in me," Van's voice dripped with pride.

"Probably the whole almost-rockstar thing?" you laughed.

Van made a face, his smile gone. "Don't think so. Gabe thinks I should probably get a proper job. Just in case, you know?"

In his expression, you could read the shame of being a disappointment to someone. On the bus he said he couldn't let people down. You had assumed he meant his parents, and while they were probably a part of it, it was clear Gabe was the focus of Van's attempt to make good. Maybe they'd always been like that; maybe it was Gabe's lack of faith that motivated Van to keep going, and it worked like that. Maybe it was a novelty for Gabe to date a boy in a band, but that novelty wore off when Van dropped out of high school. You didn't want to make assumptions, so you changed the subject. You asked about the show, and if Van was excited. Of course he was.

…

Whenever Catfish had a show you'd get a text message from Van. They'd be all emoticons and abbreviations; sometimes it was nearly impossible to decode what he meant. You'd drag Amelia along, then meet up with the guys after for drinks. On the nights Gabe wasn't around, you'd sit on the steps of the venue, or on the curb, or in the front seat of their second-hand van, and talk about the songs. Van would listen to which you thought worked best, which sounded most original, which the audience vibed to the most. It was your profound love for what music did to human psychology that bound you and Van together in friendship.

You started to hang out away from the shows. Van would crash on your couch a lot, and you'd make him come with you whenever you needed a new record. Sometimes you went with him and Gabe to Sunday roast dinner at his parents. Sometimes Larry would come instead of Gabe; sometimes Benji. It was interesting to watch Mary and Bernie interact with each of Van's friends. They seemed to like Larry best.

It was halfway through a movie marathon when Van started to fidget with his phone. He kept walking back and forth from kitchen to lounge room.

"Van. Do you want me to pause it? What are you doing?" you asked.

"No. Sorry. It's fine. Sorry," he replied and sat back down. You looked over at him.

"What's wrong?"

He shrugged and started to chew on his lip. Van did that when he was nervous. You knew it was next level when his leg started to bounce too. Pretending you didn't have enough information in your brain to write a book about Van's movement and mannerisms, you waited for him to speak.

"I… It's Gabe… I think he's probably going to break up with me?"

"Why do you think that?"

"Don't know. We don't talk much anymore. He made these new friends at uni and I don't think he wants me to meet them. I guess that's fair. They're probably dead clever and I'm… me. I just. I love him. So much. I don't know what I'd do without him?" As Van spoke you could hear what was happening. Before talking about it, he could pretend it was not real, but as soon as the sound of the words hit the air they became evidence of the breakdown. The potential break up. You didn't know what to say about Gabe. You didn't know him well enough to guess if he was going to break up with Van. He'd be fucking mental to though. Van was all that was good about the world.

"What do you mean you're you?"

"Well, I'm a bit daft, yeah?" Van replied like it was true. It sounded like something he knew about the world because he'd been told so. You stood and walked to him, then sat close. You put your hands on his shoulders.

"Van. You're not stupid,"

"Not smart enough for any of that school stuff though,"

"Okay, so, I'm going to tell you a thing and you're going to believe me because you know I don't lie, okay?" He nodded, and you dropped your hands. "So, the way we kind of define what it means to be clever is through schooling mostly. In school if you do well you're considered intelligent; book smart. If you don't, then you're not. The reason that doesn't make sense is because the way we run schools now isn't because of a love of learning or anything good like that. It's just a product of the industrial revolution, basically. We needed workers. And before that, only the high class could even access schooling, so it was seen as this stupid privilege and it was about studies of the Classics and all this enlightenment view bullshit, right," you paused to see if Van was following, and you could tell by the look on his face that he was. "So, school is a not a measure of intelligence, because academic ability doesn't equal intelligence. There was this guy named Gardner that redefined intelligence and he said there are a bunch of different types, and that we used to only think that academic one was it, but equal to it is, like, physical/bodily intelligence, and emotional intelligence, and also musical intelligence. Everyone is genius, but we just keep using the wrong ways to measure that, so people like you don't think they're smart when they're actually really, really fucking clever. You might have the attention span of a puppy, Van, but you're not stupid. Not by a long shot."

After that, Van clung to you. You'd get constant updates about the continual demise of his relationship with Gabe. He'd call you whenever he couldn't think of a word he was looking for. He moved from crashing on the couch to sharing your bed, pillows piled between you. Amelia joked that she'd be suspicious of it all, if Van weren't gay.

"He's not?" you replied, speaking before realising you were giving the suspicion ammunition.

"What?"

"He's pansexual."

Amelia laughed hard, then whispered to herself "Van McPan." Pulling herself together, she said, "Does Gabe know how much time you spend with Van? If my boyfriend was hanging out with someone else like that, I'd be pissed,"

"I don't think Gabe cares about Van much at all anymore."

You were right, and that became painfully apparent when you got a call from Van's phone at two am on the weekend. It was not Van on the other end, but someone from a bar. "Lass, you gotta come get this one. He's a mess and I'm 'bout a minute away from calling the cops." You begged them not to, and quickly threw on a hoodie and drove across town. 

When you got there, Van was sitting in the gutter. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin blotchy with red. He'd been crying hard; anyone could see that. A security guard was trying to get him to move along, but Van kept lashing out with weak fists. You dropped down in front of him and had to take his head in your hands before he realised you were there. 

"Y/N?" he said and tears started to well in his eyes. You nodded at the guard and said you'd take it from there. "Y/N. He… He…"

"It's okay. Come on. Can you stand? Let's get you home and we'll talk about it, yeah?"

Van laid in the backseat. His crying slowed, but he kicked at the door hard in anger. You wanted to tell him to calm down, but if he had hurt and rage, you knew he shouldn't have bottled it up. Inside your place, Van curled up in your lap. You asked if it was about Gabe. Of course it was. They'd broken up. More accurately: Gabe had told Van to fuck off, then proceeded to leave the bar with his uni friends. You tried to talk it through with Van, to help him see the silver lining, but he was too broken. He exhausted himself and passed out. You moved from under his sleeping frame and covered him in a blanket.

…

Everyone thought Van would get better after the breakup, after the initial shock of it. Speaking to Larry, you both felt that without Gabe, Van could focus on the band and learn his own worth better. It wasn't like that though. Van drank every day. When he could string sentences together over the phone, they were slurred and lacked a coherency. It went on for weeks, and finally the decision was made that you would go stay with Van. You took his room, because he spent most of the time on the couch anyway.

You stopped him from drinking before four in the afternoon, and that was progress. You made him wash his hair every couple of days. In the first week you had to sit him in the bath and do it for him. "What's the point?" he repeated again and again. He didn't eat much at first, but eventually his stomach twisted in hunger pains and he began to ate whatever you put in front of him. Colour returned to his skin, and even if he didn't laugh, he smiled at jokes made by the various visitors that came to see him. A month later he was almost himself again. He had taken over the duties of monitoring showers and food, and he had started writing again.

You were sitting side by side on the couch, both absorbed in the scribbles of your pencils on paper. "Y/N," Van spoke, his voice cutting through the comfortable silence. "I'm sorry,"

"It's alright,"

"No. It's not. You didn't have to do this. You've taken too much time off work already. You should go back to your life. I'll be fine,"

"Will you though?"

It was difficult. On the one hand, you did need to start making a steady income again. Also, you missed your own bed and the peace lilies in your bathroom were probably dead from lack of watering. On the other hand, you liked living with Van and Larry, even under the miserable conditions. Van felt like home, no matter what mood he was in. You couldn't play mental health nurse forever; couldn't play house forever 

The apartment you returned to you felt different. There was too much space. It was too clean. Not enough Van. You kicked yourself, thinking how fucked up it was to get a crush on someone while they were so utterly heartbroken. You stopped then. Crush? Is that what it was? You'd not entertained the thought. Not let yourself go there. It's not like pretending to not feel it made it less problematic or more ethical, but you know… flawed human cognitive processes.

…

It was always going to be music that saved Van. As soon as he went back to band practice and started booking shows again, his life post-Gabe fell into place. And you, you fell in line by his side. You helped carry their amps and guitars on and off stage. You fought with Larry about A.S.A., and you told Van to keep working on Tyrants; it had potential. The time you spent with Van alone became increasingly more intimate, and you couldn't work out if it was purposeful.

Instead of just meeting at the shops, he'd pick you up and pay for lunch at small cafes he'd read about online. He'd buy you gifts and pretend like it was no big deal. When you crashed at his, he'd carry you to his bed. He never fell asleep on your couch anymore. He'd stand up, take the cups to the sink, then announce it was bedtime and disappear down the hall. It was obvious to everyone that it was the beginning of a relationship. To you, it was Van seeking comfort in the wake of the space left behind by Gabe. You didn't want to be the rebound.

It was getting to you, though. Van's hand brushing along yours as you walked side by side. Money you'd been saving because he'd buy all your drinks. Shadows under his eyes cast by his lashes. The small nod he'd do whenever he was listening to someone tell a story. Changing tones of the people around you, Amelia, Larry, his parents and yours; like you no longer occupied the role of friend, but something different. Something more. Daydreams. You could try to convince yourself all you wanted that it was a bad idea, but your heart was dead set on beating faster whenever Van was around.

After three months of limbo, four after Gabe, you had resigned to the truth. You loved Van. You probably loved him from the moment he picked Bowie. You just knew better, and were more respectful than that. But then, officially single, officially okay again, things had changed. As you finished reading the last chapter of The Transmigration of Bodies in the fading afternoon sun, you watched Van and Larry through the kitchen window. You were in their backyard, feet up on the dusty outdoor table. You didn't know what they were arguing about, but it was fun to watch regardless. Van had changed. You didn't know him before Gabe, so it was hard to say exactly how, but you liked him like this. He was happy and had faith in himself. You fucking loved him.

He came out and turned the outside lights on. "Why you sitting in the dark?" he asked and sat in a chair next to you.

"Too lazy to stand?"

"Fair enough. Should come in, though. You'll catch a death,"

"I will. Where's Larry?" you asked.

"Went to get dinner,"

"Is that what you were fightin' about?"

"We were not fighting. A heated argument, maybe."

Van grinned and you rolled your eyes at him. When he stood and held his hand out to you, you took it and followed him inside. It was quiet without Larry and without the music that usually played constantly from somewhere in the house. Van dropped onto the couch and pulled you down with him. Tangled up limbs and quiet breathing, you could hear his heartbeat through his chest. You told him so.

"Does it sound normal?" he asked. You shrugged and kept listening to the melodic pumping of blood. Van's fingers started to run through your hair, gently combing out knots and loops. "Y/N?"

"Don't," you said immediately. "Whatever you're about to say, please don't,"

"You don't even know what I was gonna say!" he replied, high pitched.

"Doesn't matter,"

"It does. It's important. Sit up," he persisted. He moved and you had no choice but to sit up. "I just wanted to say thank you. For everything. You know? You've been so important to me and I don't know what I'd do without you,"

"Okay. You're welcome. Please stop now,"

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, smiling and amused. You didn't know what he was doing, and you knew you were freaking out and about to make it all worse. You knew that by telling him to shut up, you were essentially forcing the conversation to go in the exact direction you were trying to stop it from going. Somehow, knowing that didn't make you stop.

"I just… Don't say anything that will change this,"

"Change what?"

"Our friendship," you replied. He looked for explanation in your face, and there was a second where you thought you had imagined the touches and the presents and the feelings. 

Then, "You mean, don't say anything like 'Y/N, I'm in love with you and I want to spend the rest of my life kissin' the tip of your nose and making you proud like you already are' and changin' the friendship like that?" He smirked.

You rolled your shoulders back and bit your lip. Looking for the right words, you finally settled on, "Fuck you." Van laughed and pulled you into a hug. You tried to push away from him, but he tickled you into submission.

"Okay, so we're dating now," he said as you laid panting on the couch, kicking at him. He held your feet still. "Yeah?"

"No,"

"Class. I'll let everyone know,"

"Van,"

"Shout it from the rooftop,"

"You're such a fucking twat,"

"Well, you're the one that loves me, so that says more 'bout you, don't it?"

You shook your head, narrowed your eyes, and started to playfully kick at him again.


End file.
